Ed Salvo:University
of Wisconsin, Parkside. Majored in Chemistry, minored in Math and Physics. Never
completed the degree. I completed at night a 6-month associate degree in
Programming at Manpower Business Training Institute in Milwaukee, WI.

DP:What inspired you
to go into game design?

Ed Salvo:I had just
moved to Iowa to be a Project Leader on a project that was cancelled the day I
walked in the door. I bought myself an Atari 800 and was looking for a way to
make some money using it. The dealer that sold me the machine wanted to create a
flight simulator for the 2600. So using the MagicCard I taught myself how to
program the 2600 and developed a flight simulator for him under contract for
$5000. It took me about 2 months. It was not released as he had lost interest in
the project.

DP:Were there any
programmers or games that inspired you?

Ed Salvo:I am first
and foremost a programmer. I have worked on many applications for many companies
and to me games were just another application. I did like the Atari 400/800
version of Missile Command.

DP:Did you work
for anyone prior to Games By Apollo (after school)?

Ed Salvo:My first
computer job was at Harley Davidson. I ran punched card sorters, reproducers,
and interpreters and decollated paper output from an IBM 370/135. I made my way
to Programmer after being an Operator for a while. I programmed in PL/I. I then
went to JI Case as a COBOL programmer and got involved with IBM Series 1
Assembler. I then moved to Iowa to work for Collins Radio (a division of
Rockwell).

DP:Apollo was the
second 3rd-party Atari VCS software company to start up (after Activision), and
sadly, the first to go out of business. How did you hear about Apollo? When
did you start working there? Were you the 1st person (programmer)
hired?

Ed Salvo:While
living in Iowa, a friend sent me an ad from the Dallas newspaper. The ad was for
a video games programmer. I contacted Pat Roper and offered him a game
that I had developed in about 4 weeks - Skeet Shoot. He flew me to Dallas
and we talked. His company, National Career Consultants (NCC), was a small
filmstrip producer - the kind that schools used with the recording that says
“beep, turn to the next frame”. He offered me a job to lead the development for
a new company that he was forming, Games by Apollo. I turned him down; I thought
it was too risky. Back in Iowa, Pat contacted me and offered to buy Skeet Shoot
for $5,000. I accepted and agreed to a contract with him to develop
Spacechase. After Spacechase was done, I accepted a position with the new
Games by Apollo as their Director of Development. I was tasked with hiring 25
programmers to build a staff and develop games.

DP:The original
company name was Games By Apollo when they debuted in 1981, and was so named
because the name “Apollo” appealed to owner Pat Roper because it was
recognizable and a symbol of youth an activity. Do you know who designed the
original logo? Or who did all the box artwork for the games?

Ed Salvo:No, sorry,
I don’t. I do remember the programmers had a great laugh at the logo. We all
thought Apollo looked pretty pansy.

DP:The following
year, the company name was changed to simply Apollo. Do you recall why it was
changed?

Ed Salvo:I have no
idea; I don’t remember any discussions at the time. As a matter of fact I didn’t
even know it had happened.

DP:What was the
development process like? What kind of equipment was used? Was this the same
Atari 800-based system that was later sold by VSS?

Ed Salvo:I started
out using an Atari 800 and burning an EPROM in order to test. Later, I
commissioned an electrical engineer to construct a shared RAM device that
attached to the 800 through the game controllers on the front and plugged into
the 2600. This allowed for rapid program changes. We still had no way to
instruction-step through our code. I developed software that could be put into
the game to display RAM values while the game was running. Yes, this was the
same equipment sold by VSS along with a how to manual that I wrote.

DP:Was the Atari VCS
the only system you worked on while you were there?

Ed Salvo:I was
directing 25 developers and had little time to actually develop games. I kicked
out a couple for the VCS, but spent a lot of my time teaching and developing
algorithms for the others.

DP:Were the titles
you worked on assigned, or chosen by yourself? Dan Oliver once stated Mr.
Roper handed him another company’s game (Imagic’s Demon Attack) and told him
to make a game like that (which became Space Cavern).

Ed Salvo:Pat
actually flew me out to CES in Vegas to see Demon Attack. He was very impressed
and wanted one just like it. He gave Dan the idea/specs for Space Cavern without
identifying were he got the idea. I think that was the only game that Pat
actually thought up. The other games were all developed by the staff. No, I take
that back, I think Pat thought up Racquetball, also. I remember waiting
for my luggage at DFW and watching the carousel go round; that’s where Lost
Luggage came from.

DP:About Lost Luggage
– why were 2 versions made?

Ed Salvo:This is news
to me, I don’t remember doing any of this and I can’t conceive of anyone at
Apollo messing with the game after it went to production (Ed: Ernie Runyon
programmed Lost Luggage, with a lot of help from Ed).

DP:Did you work
with any graphics or sound artists? If so, do you recall who helped with what?

Ed Salvo:I worked
with Byron Parks who was a sound engineer. He had perfect pitch. I
remember we wanted to create a laser sound for Spacechase. He taped a sound
using a reel-to-reel. Then he played the sound by hand listening to each note in
a distorted form and told me what note it was, C3 C4, etc. I programmed what he
said and played it at real speed and we tweaked it to get the sound effect. He
also came up with the frequencies for each note by listening to me program them
and adjusting the pitch to get what we wanted. He also created the music for
Racquetball and lots of the other sound effects.

DP:Were you
responsible for writing the manuals, or did someone else handle that? In
comparing the manual descriptions for Spacechase and Space Cavern,
it would appear that Space Cavern was a ‘sequel’ to Spacechase. Was this
planned, or a coincidence?

Ed Salvo:The manuals
were done by Pat’s office staff. The only input the developers had was to relate
how the game operated to the manual creators.

DP:Your first Apollo
game, Skeet Shoot, was initially released with a glitch that caused the
picture to roll. Do you know approximately how many shipped with that? Apollo
must have done a good job of either recalling them or catching the problem very
early, as we’ve yet to come across a cart with the problem.

Ed Salvo:The games that rolled were all European versions for PAL. We were
informed of it early on and corrected the problem by adding more screen lines to
the game.

DP:Spacechase
was Apollo’s best-selling title. I clearly remember how visually
impressive it was at the
time, as the effect of flying over a planet surface was unlike anything else at
the time. The addition of a “night time” effect was also ground-breaking.
Do you know how many copies were sold?

Ed Salvo:Yes, I am
particularly proud of Spacechase. I developed the scrolling moon on purpose. The
nighttime version was the result of looking for easy ways to make more options
on the cart.

DP:Apollo also
offered to make customized or ‘monogrammed’ versions of Spacechase. Do you
recall how many were made/sold?

Ed Salvo:I think
less than 10.

DP:As of now, DP
managed to find the only known copy (formerly owned by Electronic Games magazine
co-founder Arnie Katz). One was also made (on camera) for Leeza Gibbonsbut so far we’ve been unable to find a copy of the footage. Any chance
you have a tape of this?

Ed Salvo:PM Magazine came to our offices to film a segment. They did film me doing
it, but I don’t have a copy. I was camera dumbstruck. I remember all of
the developers crowding into the doorway of my office laughing their heads off.
I was a blubbering idiot. I think about 5 seconds of my interview made it to the
piece, and that had all the “ughs” and blank tape edited out. While Leeza was
there I did make a customized Spacechase. This involved changing the 3 shapes in
the explosion graphic to her initials. When her ship died her initials appeared.

DP:Can you talk a bit
about each game that you did? What the inspiration for each one was, what the
easiest/hardest part of designing it was, how long each took (approximately),
etc.

Ed Salvo:Skeet Shoot was done independently; I think it took about a month
at home at night.

Spacechase was under contract. 6 weeks.

Racquetball - about 4 weeks.

Lost Luggage - about 4 weeks.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre - about 6 weeks, not real
proud of this one but we had to eat.

Glacier Patrol - about 3 weeks. This went so fast
that Pat Roper tried to claim that I had worked on it while working at Apollo
which was not true.

Mountain King - 6 weeks.

Gust Buster - 6 weeks. This was an attempt to
provide a new way for the player to interact with the controller. By controlling
the vertical motion he could indirectly control horizontal motion. He had to
think ahead instead of just reacting.

DP:I recall there was
some public outcry over both Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween’s violent
theme. Looking at how violent games have become now, it’s almost laughable that
games like TCM or Exidy’s old Death Race coin-op could create so much
“unwanted” attention (although such media attention invariably only serves to
help sell more copies…)

Ed Salvo:I really
didn’t want to do it. As a matter of fact, none of us had seen the movie and we
had to watch it to get game ideas.

Halloween was done by VSS, but we contracted it out to a
couple of ex-Apollo programmers I don’t remember who (Ed: Tim Martin and Robert
Barber, with Micro GraphicImage).

DP:Wizard Games
cartridges used Apollo pcbs and Telesys cart shells. Do you know why this was?

Ed Salvo:VSS put the
Wizard Games people in contact with the Apollo suppliers.

DP:Was
Infiltrate the only other game not designed in-house by Apollo (besides your
first 2 games)? Do you know who did Infiltrate?

Ed Salvo:Yes, we did
all of the other games. No, I don’t remember who did it.

DP:Were there any
games or projects that you or others worked on at Apollo that
ultimately never got
released or even finished?

Ed Salvo:When I left
Apollo, I think there were about 6 2600, 4 5200, and 4 Colecovision under
development. I don’t remember what happened to them.

DP: I found some other
notes I had for you, in regards to Kyphus and “Commander Warp II”. Do you recall
anything about these?

Ed Salvo:I remember the name Kyphus but not anything about either
game.

DP:You were also 1 of
4 partners in VSS, who contracted to write games for other companies. I’m
guessing this was after Apollo had folded? What did VSS stand for, and who were
the other partners?

Ed Salvo:Four of us
working at Apollo left when it appeared that Pat was not taking the right steps
to stay in business. I was Director of Development, Terry Grantham was
Director of Finance, Mike Smith was Director of Operations and George
(last name forgotten) was Head of Accounting. The four of us formed VSS (Video
Software Specialists, although we never used anything but “VSS”). VSS was the
contract development arm; with Sunrise we were the manufacturing arm. VSS
developed games for CBS Electronics, Ktel (Xonox), Sunrise, and Wizard Games.

DP:Can you explain
what the READS 2600 development system was. Did you
work on the hardware
and/or software for this? Do you recall how many were sold? Nobody
has yet to find one.

Ed Salvo:The READS
2600 was the shared RAM that we created for development
coupled with an Atari 800 with a manual. I’m not sure we sold any.

DP:Mountain
King
was one of the first “cross-platform” games (made for the VCS, 400/800, 5200,
Colecovision, and Commodore 64). How did the deal with E.F. Dreyer come
about?Was Robert Matson (programmer for the Atari 8-bit version) an employee
at VSS? How much (if at all) did either of them help you with your VCS
version? And did you develop the bank-switching process that allowed for it to
be 12K?

Ed Salvo:Boy, things
are fuzzy. No, Matson was not a VSS employee. I think we were approached at CES
to program the 2600 version. The 12K cart was developed outside of VSS. I did
all of the programming. I had an 800 version of the game, which I was to
emulate. The 12K cart, in addition to providing 3 4K banks switchable under
software control,
also had an extra 128 bytes of RAM, bringing the available total to 256 bytes.

DP:Occasionally, programmers
would put little “Easter eggs” in some of their games that would reveal
their name, or a message. Your “secret kingdom” in VCS Mountain King is
well-known. Are there Easter eggs in any of your other titles? Do
you recall any fellow co-workers that put them in their games?

Ed Salvo:I
personally do not like Easter eggs that promote the developer. VSS did not allow
developers
to put them in our games unless the contractor asked for them. The secret level
in Mountain
King was a feature of the 800 game and I duplicated it. That was the only
game I recall that had one.

DP:You also did at
least one non-VCS game (that we know of) – Gust Buster, for the
Colecovision. Was this the only non-VCS title you did?

Ed Salvo:I think we
(VSS) initially did 4 for the Colecovision - Gust Buster, Campaign ’84,
Rolloverture and Quest for Quintana Roo. Quest for Quintana Roo
was developed by VSS for both the 2600 and Colecovision machines for Sunrise.
VSS only did Mountain King for the 2600.

I also did Rolloverture for Sunrise, and a game for the
Odyssey(?) from England. I don’t remember what it was called. I remember a
penguin on some ice. I think it was a kid’s educational game.

DP:A sequel to Quest
for Quintana Roo, titled Wrath of Quintana Roo, was announced. Does this
sound familiar at all?

Ed Salvo:No.

DP:The penguin game
you mentioned really has me stumped. I checked with the knowledgeable Odyssey2
collectors on Digital Press and nobody knows of any Odyssey/Videopac (the Euro
version of the O2) game as you described. Was this done while you were at VSS?

Ed Salvo:Sorry, I
only have a vague recollection of an educational game with letters of the
alphabet, there was a second game done by VSS, which had math. I remember you
had to run around building equations.

DP:The C-64 and
VIC-20 versions of Mountain King were done by Beyond, and the game’s design (in
both) are a bit different from the other versions (for one thing, there’s no
spider’s lair at the bottom. The VIC-20 version doesn’t even have a spider!).
I’m guessing VSS didn’t program for those platforms?

Ed Salvo:Correct.

DP:With your games,
were there any features you would have liked to added, or any known bugs or
glitches that gave you trouble (or never got resolved)?

Ed Salvo:None that I
remember.

DP:Do you
remember what early or tentative titles your games might have had (if any)?

Ed Salvo:No.

DP:If you had a
chance to redo any of your games, what would you change (if anything)?

Ed Salvo:I think Racquetball had too many shadows, denoting the ball’s position in
3D space.

DP:Over the years,
we’ve heard some stories as to why Apollo went out of business (well before the
industries infamous “crash”), such as owner Pat Roper using the company’s
profits to buy a helicopter (or a plan about designing/selling 2-person
helicopters?). Is that true? Can you describe what (and when) the final days
of Apollo were like?

Ed Salvo:Pat starting early on trying to emulate Activision. I remember him saying
at one staff meeting that Activision had 26 million in sales its first year so
we would have 27. Activision had a campus with 7 buildings each 7 stories so we
would have 8 buildings of 8 stories. He built up production and inventory to
sell 27 million but sales didn’t happen. I think we had 9 million in 9 months.
Yes, Pat thought the answer to Dallas’ Central Expressway was two-man helicopters ala
the Jetsons. He hired an engineer and bought a helicopter kit. I told him they
(drivers) have problems in two-dimensions with lines; can you imagine
3-dimensions with no lines? 2 weeks after the four of us left, I think the
sheriff chained the doors as Apollo was forced into bankruptcy.

After the demise of Apollo I think he continued with
National Career Consultants. I don’t know what happened to it.

DP:I never realized
Apollo had some many programmers (25). It certainly sounds as though Mr. Roper
was trying to expand the company too quickly (and you’re quite right – personal
helicopters are a horrible idea- then and now). Do you recall the names of any
other Apollo programmers?

Ed Salvo:Sorry, I’m
drawing a blank.

DP:Did you ever
attended any of the industry shows back then (such as CES or Toy Fair)? Leonard
Herman also recalled that Apollo had a booth at the January 1983 CES in Las
Vegas, but that there weren’t any company executives or game demonstrators in
the booth!

Ed Salvo:Apollo had
a presence at Chicago in 82. They hired models to demo the games.

Photos of
Apollo's unreleased games for the Atari 8-bit - Antic, Cosmic War, and Space Cavern

DP:As far as non-VCS
Apollo games, I’m only aware of two 5200 games – Antic and Space
Cavern. Do you know anything about games planned for other systems (Intellivision,
Colecovision, TI-99/4a, etc.)?

Ed Salvo:As I said
we were developing games for Intellivision and Colecovision, but I don’t
remember them.

DP:Can you describe
your career, between your time with Apollo and now? Have you stayed within the
field of game design?

Ed Salvo:I was at VSS for about 2 years. When VSS started we were making contracts
for game development for about $50,000. After about a year contracts were down
to $20,000. VSS continued by making games for Sunrise, which didn’t sell very
well as the whole market was gone.

After I left VSS I went to Harris Corp as a programmer on
financial systems. When I left Harris I ported Super Off-Road to the
Atari Lynx under a contract with Telegames. Then I joined forces with David
Mahaffey (a former VSS developer) and my wife, Janet. We contracted with
Terry Grantham to develop Double Dragon V for the Atari Jaguar. When
that game was done, I went back to mainframe development at AT&T. While there I
became involved with Visual Basic and the internet. I left AT&T for EDS where I
developed internet applications. Several of my co-workers at EDS went to a
company called MH2 which was developing an internet application for homebuilders
and suppliers. They invited me to come over and I accepted. MH2 renamed to
Hyphen Solutions and I ended my career there, retiring in 2004.

DP:Do you still own
any of your games for these systems, either as a keepsake, or to show friends or
family?

Ed Salvo:Nope.

DP:Which of
your titles are your favorite, and what types of games in general?

Ed Salvo:I still think Spacechase was my best work. I enjoyed playing Mountain
King. Today the only games I play are poker online (for free).

DP:Have you
stayed in touch with any of your former co-programmers?

Ed Salvo:David
Mahaffey lives around the corner from me.

DP:What are your
thoughts on how the industry has evolved?

Ed Salvo:No opinion.
To me it was always one more application with one more set of specs. I’m a
programmer at heart.